I said, “She might rent. Or keep a unit in a development or a time share in a hotel where the deed’s registered to a corporation.”
“Gated paradise with a Greg Norman course? She said, ‘My condo.’ That doesn’t sound like renting.”
“Pay enough monthlies and you start feeling like an owner.”
“If that’s the case, I’m screwed.”
I said, “On the positive side, a resort or hotel might have detailed documentation of comings and goings.”
“Optimism at this time of day is unseemly, lad.”
“Late afternoon should be gloomy?”
“Anytime’s the right time for gloomy. I’ve got my homework assignment, leave me to it and enjoy a normal life. I come across something, I’ll let you know.”
“How about I stay and we divide it up. You take developments, I try hotels. My end shouldn’t take long, I don’t see her bunking in a Motel 6. Or you could call that assistant at the law firm and see if she’s still talkative.”
“That would be nice... nah, don’t wanna push it with her. Just in case ol’ Enid has been bad and her lawyer finds out I’m snooping and battens the hatches tighter.”
He turned back to his keyboard.
I sat there.
“Fine,” he said, “you twisted my arm.”
We went downstairs and he asked to borrow a civilian laptop from a clerk named Kanesha.
“The doctor here won’t screw it up, I promise. I’ll repay you with a humongous lunch, you choose the place.”
She said, “You like vegetarian?”
“I could pretend.”
“Secret of a happy life, Lieutenant. Like when we tell guys they’re perfect.” To me: “You’ll be careful? I’m out of here in two hours, need to take it with me. And no downloads of monkeys who look like Hitler, please. Got enough of that with my kids.”
Milo worked at his desk and I sat on a chair in the hallway outside his door, typing away and calling on his personal cell.
Lots of luxury lodging in the desert communities. An hour later, both of us had come up empty.
He said, “Never worked so hard trying to verify an alibi. Maybe I will try that assistant but I want to sleep on it, see if there’s some other way to go. You up for a drink? Or two or three? Either way, I’m indulging. Or as you guys call it, self-reinforcing.”
I phoned Robin. Her voice competed with background machine noise. “Oh, hi, hon, just started working, had to fix some jigs and got held up. I could use an hour or two, if you don’t mind.”
“Perfect timing. I’ll be hanging out with you-know-who.”
Milo said, “That’s the best I get?”
Robin said, “I hear him back there. Hanging out as in distilled spirits? I was hoping we could share a bottle of wine out by the pond.”
“I’ll have a beer.”
“There you go, a guy thing.”
During the last case we worked together, Milo took me to a bar a few blocks from the station, a place I’d never been. He was greeted by name. I thought I knew all his haunts. Live and learn.
I figured we’d head to the same place but he pocketed his car keys and said, “Separate vehicles, save you some time,” and scrawled an address on south Westwood Boulevard. “Right on your way home. Call me responsible.”
I arrived first; a restaurant named Bosco’s just north of Pico. The tricolor neon sign above the door roughly approximated a map of Italy. One of the few pre-mall holdovers on Westwood. Happy Hour lasted until three.
I was checking out the posted menu when Milo drove up and said, “Buena sera, Alessandro.”
We entered a world based on nitrogen, oxygen, and marinara. Snug, dim, too warm, an oppressively low ceiling. A warped lattice partition divided the space into red Naugahyde booths for eating and red Naugahyde stools lined up at a scarred wooden bar. Every stool was occupied, mostly by older men who looked as if they were waiting for a casting call on the next mob movie. No one in the booths until we took one at the back.
An ancient waitress wearing a too-short dress and intense red hair ambled over. Her mouth moved as if she were chewing gum but she wasn’t. If you called her a “server” she’d probably slap you.
“Hiya, Lieutenant.”
“Hey, Mary.” Milo ordered a double shot of whiskey, iced tea, and a large pizza with everything on it.
Mary said, “The usual. And you?”
My Grolsch order elicited a wink and a shimmy. “I figured you weren’t a Bud guy. We might even have that.” To Milo: “Class act, your friend.”
“Doing my best to improve the neighborhood.”
“Taxpayers deserve it from you.”
When she left, I said, “How many of your hidey-holes don’t I know about?”
“What — oh, this? A stopover.”
“To where?”
“Like I said, right on the way to your place.”
“You need to fuel up before you visit?”
“Don’t get touchy. On certain days it helps to settle my system a bit so I can be civil to Robin and the pooch. You, I don’t care.”
The drinks came. My beer tasted like Bud.
I sat there as Milo drank and loosened his tie and plucked at an X of duct tape patching the arm of the booth.
He put his whiskey down, traced a line in the frost coating the iced-tea glass. “Let’s say Enid is a rich lady who had the misfortune of being invaded by Zelda. Maybe or maybe not she had the colchicine on her property. Maybe or maybe not she watched Zelda die instead of calling for help and is covering her own ass by making up a cockamamie story. What bothers me is that next big step: offing two innocent bystanders. You see her able to transport corpses? Trucking them away in her Porsche or her Rolls and putting the bodies where they haven’t been found? The alternative is a classic domestic: Maria Garcia did kill Alicia. But the problem with that is Imelda. I know Lorrie suggested her case could be unrelated to Alicia. But two women, same job, go missing at the same time?”
I thought about that. “There is another way to turn the prism. Imelda and Alicia aren’t dead. They went off together.”
“Imelda’s gay and just came out?”
“What if they met while schmoozing during lunch hour and something clicked? Most affairs begin at work.”
“Imelda would just bail on her family and leave them with all that anxiety?”
“Telling them could seem worse,” I said. “Maybe she’s still figuring out how to do it.”
“Hey kids, guess what, Mom’s got a see-cret... yeah, that could be messy.”
He picked up his whiskey and finished it. “Alicia and Imelda being an item could lead somewhere else: Maria found out and dispatched both of them. She might’ve even surprised them at work. All we have is her word that she didn’t know where Alicia worked.”
“She’s got no driver’s license.”
“So she borrowed wheels. Or hired a lowlife from the park to do a contract killing. Seeing as we’re fact deprived, anything’s possible. Hell, we sit here long enough, we could create a mini-series.”
He called for a refill. Mary looked at me. I said, “I’m fine.”
“Maybe you’ll get thirsty when the pizza comes. We put too much salt in it.”
A few minutes later she returned with Milo’s drink and the pie, a massive disk laden high with a few things I could identify, many I couldn’t.
“Clams,” said Milo, picking up an amorphous pink chunk. “Excellent.”
“Even more salt to help your blood pressure,” said Mary. To me: “Try it, see if I’m right.”
I peeled off a slice and tasted. One of the unidentifiables might’ve been eggplant. Or another species of ocean invertebrate.
“Well?” said Mary.